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Any motorcycle rider knows that there can be a funky stink that hovers around you on rides. This isn’t caused by riding in the tailwind of garbage trucks, but from sitting in traffic on hot summer days and sweating into your helmet.

Unless you’re fastidious about cleanliness and take the helmet lining out and regularly wash it, chances are you just put up with the smell. Or get used to it.

Sharp has come up with another solution — its Ion Generator with Plasmacluster.

The technical specs for the generator are as complex as you’d expect. The product has been designed to clear out bacteria and mold from inside motorbike and scooter helmets, without wetting the lining. It can be used on full-faced, open-faced and half-type helmets, depending on the level of skin grafting you’d like with your helmet in case of an accident.

Sharp says the ion feature of the product works by harnessing positive and negative ions with air purification technology, to decompose and remove bacteria.

Despite the complicated science behind the product, it is easy to use — you plug the connector into the unit and then into a power point. You place the helmet on the top of the generator just above the filter and then switch it on and leave it running.

Sharp recommends you leave the helmet on the unit for at least eight hours. The company also wisely recommends you don’t ride the generator.

We left it on the unit for 6 and a half hours. Our helmet was relatively new and not heavily used over the summer months, so a smell test for whether the generator worked was hard to judge. We wore our helmet about 20 minutes after taking it off the generator and could feel a difference — it felt clean and crisp.

However, there was faint new car smell inside the helmet after using the ion generator. We started to get a headache from the new car smell after about 15 minutes of riding. To avoid this, we’d recommend you leave the helmet to rest overnight after using the ion generator.

The product has an easy-to-clean filter which can be easily popped out from the bottom of the unit. We inspected the filter after we ran the generator and there didn’t seem to be any dust trapped in it, but Sharp recommends the filter be cleaned every six months. There is also a cleaning brush provided which can be accessed at the back of the unit.

The idea of an ion generator is a good one. It takes the hassle out of cleaning your helmet, it’s an easy product to use, and it seemed to do the job well. However, the helmet needs to sit on the generator for a long time and it has a headache-inducing smell afterwards. We’re also not sure how big the market would be for this kind of product.

The screen was particularly good. It is bright and visible from most angles, however heat is an issue, particularly around the Windows button on the front, and on the back where the battery housing is located.

My first impression after unboxing the Q702 is that it is a nice looking unit. Styling is somewhat minimalist but very effective. The tablet part, once detached, has a nice weight, and no buttons or switches are located in awkward or intrusive positions.

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